Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX. Victor J. Blue-Bloomberg/Getty Images
If you're a 31-year-old accused of serious crimes, the normal course of action is to take a deal to reduce the sentence and then hope for the best in front of the judge. You will also likely be resigned to spending decades in prison. Unless you're rich and connected, of course. Then you can try another strategy.
Take Sam Bankman-Fried. Despite being faced with a mountain of evidence proving he had perpetrated one of the largest frauds in U.S. history, he decided to roll the dice on a three-week trial. For his trouble, Bankman-Fried was brought to trial by a jury in less than four hours. And now, as he faces a maximum sentence of 100 years or more before a judge next month, he is doing something else that only wealthy and entitled people can do. He's trying to get out of the whole mess.
As The New York Times reported Tuesday night, Bankman-Fried has hired “a new lawyer known for his courtroom showmanship” and another high-profile attorney to work on a long-term appeals process. He also has his law professor parents – the Bay Area power couple known to their fellow Stanford campus residents as “Barb and Joe” – working on legal issues and organizing a sympathy campaign to show why everyone is over the poor guy Boys are wrong.
All of this is a “long-term strategy orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s family and friends to reverse his conviction and bring about a public reassessment of his leadership at FTX.” The Times does not acknowledge that it is a vehicle for this strategy – as demonstrated by Bankman-Fried's team waiting for their sympathetic article to be published before filing a trove of letters and arguments in court to support their position. Nor does the article raise the awkward question of how the Bankman-Fried clan pays these high-profile lawyers and a PR firm whose monthly fees start at $50,000.
The likely answer is that Bankman-Fried's parents are paying the bills with the help of $10 million they asked him to pay his father for legal work – money that came from the coffers of the crypto companies that had collapsed under a mountain of deceit. That's bad enough, but even more disgusting when you read things like this: “His lawyers said Bankman-Fried was motivated not by greed, but by a desire to improve the world through charitable giving. Material things and extravagance had no use for him, they said.”
Really? Remember, this is the same man who lived in a luxury villa and enjoyed jetting around the world, meeting the likes of Tom Brady and Katy Perry at lavish events. There is nothing material or extravagant about it. And let's not forget that Bankman-Fried's parents are being sued by the FTX estate not only for the return of the $10 million (in his father's case), but also for a $16.4 million villa in the Bahamas that was built on theirs name is.
All of this is what makes the parents' current attempt to bring about a “public reevaluation” of their Sam so galling. They remind us at every turn that Sam shouldn't be punished for robbing his customers, because he's on the spectrum, or because he's the victim of cruel media caricatures. And so forth. What they don't want to say is that Sam is a 31-year-old man who grew up with all the privilege in the world and has shown every sign of being a liar and a sociopath.
You can't blame Barb and Joe for doing everything they could to protect their child. Any parent would do the same. But if they really wanted to show their love and help their son, they could – just once – stop telling Sam how special he is.
Jeff John Roberts
[email protected]
@jeffjohnroberts
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